European Institute of Japanese Studies (EIJS) Academy Seminars

About the talk: Japan’s electricity architecture was put in place in 1952 and was not much changed until 2011. Electricity liberalization, introduction of smart meters and smart grids bring very large investments in Japan’s energy infrastructure, and are creating huge opportunities for Japanese and foreign companies in Japan’s energy sector. At the same time there is much uncertainty about Japan’s nuclear program -will Japan’s nuclear power plants restart? The talk will explain Japan’s energy architecture today and how we arrived at today’s situation and will give you some tools to understand possible scenarios for Japan’s energy and electricity future.
As an introduction, you may watch Gerhard’s interview for The Economist about Japan’s energy situation here

About the speaker:Gerhard came first to Japan in 1984 to help build what was NTT’s first international R&D cooperation and has worked with Japan ever since. Gerhard is founder and CEO of Eurotechnology Japan KK, where he has worked for 100s of US, EU and Japanese companies on M&A and business development, and he is independent Member of the Board of Directors
of the Japanese company GMO Cloud KK, a cloud services company with about 500 employees and traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Gerhard is also the creator and curator of the Ludwig Boltzmann Symposia on Energy, Entropy and Leadership. Gerhard graduated with a PhD in Physics from Cambridge University, Trinity College, was tenured faculty at Cambridge University in Semiconductor Physics, Associate Professor at Tokyo University’s Electrical Engineering Department, and the first foreigner to lead an elite Sakigake Research project of Japan’s Science and Technology Agency.